Racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks was desperate to avoid a "Jacqui Smith moment" for the then News International boss.

Smith, a former Home Secretary, was caught in a scandal in 2009 after her husband submitted an expense claim for watching porn.

Brooks, his wife Rebekah and head of security Mark Hanna deny conspiracy to pervert the course of justice between July 5 and 19 2011 as the phone hacking investigation resulted in the closure of the News of the World.

He told the Old Bailey he "incredibly stupidly" decided to hide a bag containing explicit DVDs and a case with his Sony laptop in.

“The DVDs are of an embarrassing nature”

Charlie Brooks

Continuing with his evidence from the witness stand, Brooks said he had hidden the cargo behind the bins of an underground car park at the couple's flat in Thames Quay, west London.

"The DVDs are of an embarrassing nature," Brooks told his counsel Neil Saunders.

"On the Sony Vaio [his laptop], the main reason was it had some important book ideas that weren't book ideas that weren't backed up anywhere else, but it also had a bit of smut on it.

"When I got back to the flat, I envisaged 20 policemen coming in and emptying every drawer and looking under every nook and cranny.

"I did think about my DVDs and I had my Jacqui Smith moment – a Home Secretary who was implicated by her husband's porn.

"I didn't want the same thing to happen to Rebekah."

The incident happened while his journalist wife was being interviewed by police in Lewisham.

SCANDAL: Former MP Jacqui Smith became embroiled in an expenses scandal over porn [GETTY]

The court heard Rebekah Brooks had described her arrest that day as police making "a PR point".

Her husband went back to retrieve the bags later but they had gone, having been picked up by a caretaker and handed to police when the bins were emptied.

Brooks told the court his motive to hide the belongings was the result of an "instinctive reaction" that police could "leak this sort of material (the pornography discovery) to the press".